SUMMARY
In this workshop, we concluded that the best strategy is to focus on MEMS manufacturing sciences and infrastructure in the investigation of the coupling among the "Fabrication," "Application," and "Packaging and Reliability" groups. In summary, the least favorable approach is to pick some application areas as vehicles to pursue manufacturing sciences and packaging and reliability research. It necessarily limits the scope and thus the values of the scientific investigation and confines the applicability to a few MEMS products. Instead, the following two concluding statements represent the recommendations to NSF that will most strategically advance the MEMS field with the best use of government resources:
- Identify several key research topics in MEMS fabrications with the broadest applications and pursue the associated manufacturing sciences and related packaging and reliability issues.
- Pick the most critical reliability and packaging issues in MEMS and pursue the associated manufacturing sciences and potential applications.
In both approaches, the key emphasis is on scientific investigation with potential applications as the justification. The specific science research topics are listed in this report above. Of particular interest and importance are those listed under MEMS manufacturing sciences and infrastructure.
Finally, MEMS has been and continues to be the major challenge in every system integrating optical, microwave, digital and MEMS components. It is time for NSF and other funding agencies to establish a systematical program to promote MEMS manufacturing research. The program will develop long-term systematical research activities to be carried out by centers, multiple-investigators and single-investigators. More importantly, this program will define not only the top priority topics to be addressed but also on how the collaborations are to be coordinated.
Here is a list of action items recommended:
- Hold workshops on: 1) education, performance, test and modeling, 2) infrastructure development, and 3) supply chains
- Develop national centers on MEMS manufacturing with an emphasis on Fabrication, applications, and packaging and reliability.
- Develop an NSF home program for manufacturing of micro- and nano-systems
- Develop a foundry service for multi-functional microsystems.